The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [38]
“You have to be careful with these things,” he said, sliding the heavy metal door off the box and setting it on the floor. “You drop one on your foot and you hop for weeks.”
He ran his finger down the stacked drawers, selected one, and pulled it out.
In the tray Starling saw the tiny preserved eggs, the caterpillar in a tube of alcohol, a cocoon peeled away from a specimen very similar to hers, and the adult--- a big brownblack moth with a wingspan of nearly six inches, a furry body, and slender antennae.
'Erebus odora,“ Pitcher said. ”The Black Witch Moth."
Roden was already turning gages. “'A tropical spe?cies sometimes straying up to Canada in the fall,” he read. “ `The larvae eat acacia, catclaw, and similar plants. Indigenous West Indies, Southern U.S., considered a pest in Hawaii.' ”
Fuckola, Starling thought. “Nuts,” she said aloud, “They're all over.”
“But they're not all over all the time.” Pilcher's head was down. He pulled at his chin. “Do they double?-brood, Roden?”
“Wait a second... yeah, in extreme south Florida and south Texas.”
“When?”
“May and August.”
“I was just thinking,” Pilcher said. “Your specimen's a little better developed than the one we have, and it's fresh. It had started fracturing its cocoon to come out. In the West Indies or Hawaii, maybe, I could under?stand it, but it's winter here. In this country it would wait three months to come out. Unless it happened accidentally in a greenhouse, or somebody raised it.”
“Raised it how?”
“In a cage, in a warm place, with some acacia leaves for the larvae to eat until they're ready to button up in their cocoons. It's not hard to do.”
“Is it a popular hobby? Outside professional study, do a lot of people do it?”
“No, primarily it's entomologists trying to get a per?fect specimen, maybe a few collectors. There's the silk industry too, they raise moths, but not this kind.”
“Entomologists must have periodicals, professional journals, people that sell equipment,” Starling said.
“Sure, and most of the publications come here.”
“Let me make you a bundle,” Roden said. “A couple of people here subscribe privately to the smaller news?letters---keep 'em locked up and make you give them a quarter just to look at the stupid things. I'll have to get those in the morning.”
“I'll see they're picked up, thank you, Mr. Roden.”
Pilcher photocopied the references on Erebus odora and gave them to her, along with the insect. “I'll take you down,” he said.
They waited for the elevator. “Most people love but?terflies and hate moths,” he said. “But moths are more--- interesting, engaging.”
“They're destructive.”
“Some are, a lot are, but they live in all kinds of ways. Just like we do.” Silence for one floor. “There's a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears,” he offered. “That's all they eat or drink.”
“What kind of tears? Whose tears?”
“The tears of large land mammals, about our size. The old definition of moth was 'anything that gradu?ally, silently eats, consumes, or wastes any other thing.' It was a verb for destruction too... Is this what you do all the time--- hunt Buffalo Bill?”
“I do it all I can.”
Pilcher polished his teeth, his tongue moving behind his lips like a cat beneath the covers. “Do you ever go out for cheeseburgers and beer or the amusing house wine?”
“Not lately.”
“Will you go for some with me now? It's not far.”
“No, but I'll treat when this is over--- and Mr. Roden can go too, naturally.”
“There's nothing natural about that,” Pilcher said. And at the door, “I hope you're through with this soon, Officer Starling.”
She hurried to the waiting car.
Ardelia Mapp had left Starling's mail and half a Mounds candy bar on her bed. Mapp was asleep.
Starling carried her portable typewriter down to the laundry room, put it on the clothesfolding shelf and cranked in a carbon set. She had